


How does your garden grow

by Melitot



Category: The Secret Garden - All Media Types
Genre: Animals, Budding Love, Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Childhood, Childhood Friends, F/M, Friendship, Gardens & Gardening, Happy, Nature, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 01:23:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8870269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melitot/pseuds/Melitot
Summary: Nature sings, always. Dickon has heard her voice in the wind and in the birds' calls since he can remember.
  
  He knows that Miss Mary hears it as well: she was talking with the robin redbreast. She was listening to the wind's rustle through the hedges, and followed it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VanillaMostly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanillaMostly/gifts).
  * A translation of [Nel tuo giardino che cosa c'è](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9253307) by [Melitot Proud Eye (Melitot)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melitot/pseuds/Melitot%20Proud%20Eye). 



> Happy Yuletide, VanillaMostly!  
> I hope you enjoy this little fic as much as I enjoyed writing it :D _The secret garden_ has been one of my favourite stories since childhood, and I was very happy to fill your request. I'm sorry it's on the short side; NaNoWriMo burnt me out /laugh
> 
> PS. Your fear about Dickon dying young comes from a movie, if my googling is right - a movie that added a future with no link whatsoever to the original, so don't be sad :) I'm sure Hodgson-Burnet imagined a happier future for him... maybe with Mary. I've always thought there was something there. So, here is a fic from a shipper at heart <3  
> And if you'd like to watch an adaptation that is true to the spirit of the book, you should try the 1993 movie with Maggie Smith! It's simply magical.

He was born on the moor, and is its child like he's his father and mother's son. The sweeps redolent of heather and mist, the rocks worn out by the wind, the sparse woods he crosses mounting the little horse he found near Misselthwaite – nothing keeps secrets from him. Animals approach him without fear and Dickon is happy to be one of them.

Nature tells him many things. She's a lot simpler and more straightforward than people.

Dickon has eleven siblings, each dear and noisy and incomprehensible. They love the moor, but not like he does. They want the little church and the fields surrounding their home, human friends instead of animal ones; even Martha, who admires his energy and discoveries.

Dickon loves those things, too, but not the way they do. There is something in the communion with the moor and the beasts that talks to his soul. He guesses he was born a little different for a reason; his are the best herbs and all the wounded creatures.

Nature sings, always. Dickon has heard her voice in the wind and in the birds' calls since he can remember.

He knows that Miss Mary hears it as well: she was talking with the robin redbreast. She was listening to the wind's rustle through the hedges, and followed it.

_She opened the garden's door for Dickon._

 

He sees her arrive across the moor during a morning of cold and mist.

The young horse is warm under him. Solid. The carriage jolts upon the rocks of the old road instead, like a firefly that lost its way.

Dickon knows who's riding inside it, other than Mrs Medlock; news travel fast in Misselthwaite, and the death of Mr and Mrs Lennox has been known for months. He wonders how India is. He knows nothing of India, and neither do his parents, but maybe Martha will soon hear many stories.

Martha doesn not hear stories of elephants and savages. She has a lot to tell nonetheless.

Lord Craven's niece is named Mary, she says. She's strange and energic and imperious. She wants to be dressed every morning and undressed every evening, and never smiles; Martha is convinced she never received much kindness in her life.

Dickon thinks he could offer her however much she wants. He likes making new friends.

He meets her during an afternoon, while she's exploring the manor's gardens. What he sees surprises him: she's so pale and weak and contrary. Not like he imagined her.

But very, very similar to a magpie's starved fledgling. And gifted with the _sight_ , like Ben Wheatherstaff.

The girl talks to the robin as it were the most natural thing in the world.

He has her chase him inside the hedges' maze. He laughs, because it's like being chased by an offended fox.

He doesn't talk to her, that day. To have wild creatures follow, one has to be a little elusive.

He introduces himself the day after with Soot on his shoulder. The crow doesn't flee when Miss Mary pets him.

Soot has good intuition.

 

_Mistress Mary, quite contrary_

_How does your garden grow?_

_With silver bells and cockle shells_

_and pretty maids all in a row._

When he met her, the nursery rhyme was his second thought.

But she's not quite so contrary. She isn't at all.

A few days spent in the garden and she becomes rosy, strong and cheerful.

 

Dickon did not think he would ever find someone who shared this with him.

He has explored the moor far and wide, looking for its every secret, solving every mystery. He knows how far the heather ventures, from which cliffs the rainy wind blows; he knows the moor's unpredictable mist, its arrivals and flights under the sun's warmth. He knows all the animals inhabiting it and the places where they build their nests, dig their burrows, go to die; their colours; their voices. The plants and the shy seeds from which they're born have no misteries for him.

Dickon has so much familiarity with this land that, sometimes, he believes he is it.

And yet he never discovered a secret garden. That dreaming heart, sleeping inside the walls of Misselthwaite's park, was waiting for Mary. And Mary showed it to him.

Dickon remembers the first moment he saw it...

He's honoured to have been welcomed in its arms. He's full of joy at the thought of bringing it back to life.

Together with Mary – laughing, planting, watering.

Mary is astounding. He never had such a friend, before her. Before Colin.

Colin is a kid-boy. It's as if he'd just been born: full of apprehension and awe, he stumbles on unsteady legs. But the first steps become ten, then twenty, then thirty, and soon they all lose count.

Colin walks. Colin runs with them and Captain the fox and Yellowbeak the duck. He's not a distant, unknown entity like Mary was. From little _mahrajah_ he has become moor bird.

Dickon feels he can grow up with them both and be happy, happier. He will become a more complete person, too.

And everything thanks to her, in the end.

 

_How does your garden grow?_

 

The more time passes, the more he realizes he adores her. Her first smile was like finding the first nest of hedgehogs. Her laughter, alike to Soot's first flight.

Mary runs and skips and jumps with him, as agile and red as Captain, and Dickon loves her like he loves all his special friends.

Maybe more.

He sits next to her, on the rocking swing, and the garden disappears; Colin's voice slips far away.

She gazes at him, too. In her eyes twinkle a smile and a secret.

Who knows, Dickon thinks. Who knows what will become of them.

How will they change? Will they be divided by years and circumstances, or...?

It's the first time those questions come visit. But certainly not the last. He is just a little moor lad, with trousers too high and cracked shoes. He barely knows how to write – everything else is nature and instinct and people's knowledge.

With Mary, however, he created something unexpected. He has given joy back to two children.

Who knows if, maybe, someday an even more beautiful and unexpected garden will bloom.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
